Note: I just heard back from the CEO of Inrupt, John Bruce and besides mentioning the article was interesting, he verfied this concept would work with their technology as I describe. (I was hoping for this.)

The ad server would access information from the efforts of the consumer collected through surveys accessible by the ad servers through permissions granted.

I think the challenge to achieving tunable ads is motivation and friction. I don’t see the value as a consumer in completing surveys—it just feels like one more task added to my to do list. At the same time, I realize other consumers will complete them if the “What’s in it for me” includes coupons and discounts exclusive to respondents. This could also reduce consumer friction to adding another app to their phone.

Personally my fear with the evolution of technology is our lack of interest in doing the work as AI is ready to fill the void but I certainly do get your point. And I absolutely agree Rewards could help drive this. I mention the fact of gamifying the experiences which would need to be at the heart of this. Users are not going to interact with a standard survey there is no denying it. Thanks for your feedback APM!!

I think one of the difficult things with something like this is that we are adding friction to a user experience. Pretty much every app (if done well) is designed to reduce user friction, show only content and ads that are useful to the user. If a site starts asking a user to fill out a form to see ads or otherwise see poorly placed ads, I think it's likely that customers will just abandon the site and go somewhere else.

The platform

I don't think there is a lot of incentive for platforms to adopt a 3rd party ad network if they can avoid it. Adding extra friction is generally horrifying to platforms for the reasons I mentioned above. Having to revenue share with a third party is generally not that desirable once some semblance of scale is achieved, which is why major platforms generally build their own in house ads networks.

I think it could be possible to do this like @apm stated if everyone was better incentivized with the model. I think there would probably need to be some sort of arbitrage, where a user gets paid directly for their input where part of that compensation is revenue shared with the platform. How to do this in such a way that doesn't ad even more friction would be tricky. But eventually someone is paying for information related to the user, and if they pay the user directly I could see people being receptive to that. Perhaps this is sort of an reverse subscription model:

1. The basic "We show you generic ads model"

2. The subscription model "You pay us so that you don't see any ads"

3. The reverse subscription model "We pay you so that you see more targeted ads that you will like better and are more valuable to us"

Thank you for your feedback. Let me break it down to you this way. I believe it is proven the more information added to a dating profile adds to the chances of a better match. Is this friction? No, I believe this is engagement with technology to provide a higher likelihood of what the user is interested in and what may reciprocate. We have become too accustomed to AI doing the heavy lifting for us. I am seeing this feedback everywhere I post my articles. I fully understand this is only my opinion but I just get a sense information overload is convincing us a brighter future will be laid before us without much of our involvement. I just fundamentally do not believe this. Your idea about the user being compensated is interesting though.

But don't get me wrong I do see where you are coming from and understand your perspective. Thank you again for sharing your feedback!!!

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